Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic.

Thunderstruck

In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men: Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication. Their lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.

Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

In 1900, Isaac Monroe Cline was in charge of the Galveston station of the US Weather Bureau. He was a knowledgeable, seasoned weatherman who considered himself a scientist. When he heard the deep thudding of waves on Galveston's beach in the early morning of September 8, however, Cline refused to be alarmed. The city had been hit by bad weather before.

Rasputin: Faith, Power, and the Twilight of the Romanovs

Rasputin separates fact from fiction to reveal the real life of one of history's most alluring figures. Drawing on a wealth of forgotten documents from archives in seven countries, Smith presents Rasputin in all his complexity - man of God, voice of peace, loyal subject, adulterer, drunkard. Rasputin is not just a definitive biography of an extraordinary and legendary man, but a fascinating portrait of the twilight of imperial Russia as it lurched toward catastrophe.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

James A. Garfield may have been the most extraordinary man ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer’s monumental study of Hitler’s German empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of the 20th century’s blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic.

The Last Days of Night: A Novel

New York, 1888. Gas lamps still flicker in the city streets, but the miracle of electric light is in its infancy. The person who controls the means to turn night into day will make history - and a vast fortune. A young untested lawyer named Paul Cravath, fresh out of Columbia Law School, takes a case that seems impossible to win. Paul's client, George Westinghouse, has been sued by Thomas Edison over a billion-dollar question: Who invented the lightbulb and holds the right to power the country?

Behind Closed Doors

Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance. He's a dedicated attorney who has never lost a case; she is a flawless homemaker, a masterful gardener and cook, and dotes on her disabled younger sister. Though they are still newlyweds, they seem to have it all. You might not want to like them, but you do. You're hopelessly charmed by the ease and comfort of their home, by the graciousness of the dinner parties they throw. You’d like to get to know Grace better.

The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States.

A Man Called Ove

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness.

Alexander Hamilton

Ron Chernow, whom the New York Times called "as elegant an architect of monumental histories as we've seen in decades", now brings to startling life the man who was arguably the most important figure in American history, who never attained the presidency, but who had a far more lasting impact than many who did.

Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz

May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is 12, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel

A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in an elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, he is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the count is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel's doors.

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

Devil in the Grove is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. Despite death threats, the clan, and the urging of his associates, Marshall knew he had to defend "the Groveland Boys".

American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant

A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.

Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices

Thirty-six of the most interesting writers in the Pacific Northwest came together for a week-long marathon of writing live on stage. The result? Hotel Angeline, a truly inventive novel that surprises at every turn of the page. Something is amiss at the Hotel Angeline, a rickety former mortuary perched atop Capitol Hill in rain-soaked Seattle. Fourteen-year-old Alexis Austin is fixing the plumbing, the tea, and all the problems of the world, it seems, in her landlady mother’s absence.

Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan

Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes listeners to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.

The Whistler

Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined.

Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939

For all the literature about Adolf Hitler, there have been just four seminal biographies; this is the fifth, a landmark work that sheds important new light on Hitler himself. Drawing on previously unseen papers and a wealth of recent scholarly research, Volker Ullrich reveals the man behind the public persona, from Hitler's childhood, to his failures as a young man in Vienna, to his experiences during the First World War, to his rise as a far-right party leader.

1776

Why we think it’s a great listen: If you ever thought history was boring, David McCullough’s performance of his fascinating book will change your mind. In this stirring audiobook, McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success.

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War - while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby's best friend and fellow officer in MI6.

Publisher's Summary

Erik Larson has been widely acclaimed as a master of narrative non-fiction, and in his new book, the best-selling author of Devil in the White City turns his hand to a remarkable story set during Hitler’s rise to power.

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history.

A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first, Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany”, she has one affair after another, including with the suprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate.

As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance - and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler’s true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Göring and the expectedly charming - yet wholly sinister - Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively listenable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.

What the Critics Say

"In this mesmerizing portrait of the Nazi capital, Larson plumbs a far more diabolical urban cauldron than in his bestselling The Devil in the White City... a vivid, atmospheric panorama of the Third Reich and its leaders, including murderous Nazi factional infighting, through the accretion of small crimes and petty thuggery." (Publishers Weekly)

"By far his best and most enthralling work of novelistic history….Powerful, poignant…a transportingly true story." (The New York Times)

"[L]ike slipping slowly into a nightmare, with logic perverted and morality upended….It all makes for a powerful, unsettling immediacy." (Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair)

I have rarely been more conflicted about a book than I am about this one. In many ways it was gripping and sometimes mesmerizing and then again, it was also annoying and at the same time, utterly appalling.

The indifference and callously entrenched anti-Semitism of US State Department officials and their consequent tolerance for the atrocities of the Nazi government is hard to stomach.This is not an image of our government that could make anyone proud to be an American.

The failure of all the western nations to do anything to stop Hitler while they could -- with relative ease -- have done so is difficult to fathom. The feather-headed self-absorption of Dodd's daughter is like a case of hives: the more you scratch, the more you itch.

Most of the people in the book are awful in one way or another. Dodd, the ambassador, ultimately grows to become, in his way, heroic. He, at least, saw what was happening and tried -- within the scope of his position -- to do what he could. That no one listened to him is part of the heartbreak.

Worse is that those who failed to act more often than not did so NOT because they didn't believe him (although some really didn't), but because the majority of them were hardened anti-Semites and/or because they thought Hitler was going to rid Europe of the menace of Communism. Hitler as the lesser of two evils? How revolting is that? And all of this led to the bloodiest war in human history, a conflict wherein more than 30 million people died.

The banality of evil has never been more obvious or more terrifying. Read it and weep.

What an incredible view of a pivotal moment in history. Perhaps this book is not as powerful if you have middling knowledge of 20th century history, but I found this portrait of Germany and the birth of the Third Reich chilling.

If you have ever asked, "how could THAT have happened?" read this book, and you'll know. Watching Berlin, one of the world's most important cultural centers, dissolve into barbaric, paranoid madness is very disturbing, particularly because of how easily it happened. Its also quite sad to know that there were a few moments at the beginning, here and there, when maybe it all could have been stopped.

Very nicely read, this book makes for compelling listening. The book covers a period (1933-37) in which the monster that was Germany grew into something truly awful. William Dodd, the American ambassador in Berlin is nicely drawn. He’s a kind and decent man. We are told he is witty, although the evidence is scanty. If this is true, then the book is quite tragic as it traces a man’s descent from a joyful state into one of stress, ending with major job dissatisfaction and depression. He ends up a sad old drudge, but along the way he runs into some of German history’s strange cast. In fact, the book’s best bits are on the Night of the Long Knives. His daughter, Martha, is a piece of work. She’s a combination of fun-loving, manipulative, sensual and self-righteous that seems to drive all sorts of men to distraction. And she does go through a lot of men. Eventually, she goes off in a direction that would have deeply saddened her ambassador father, I imagine. From Mata Hari to Stalinist in three easy years. The Dodd family members, who are as different as can be, seem to get along very well with one another during a difficult time. It’s a very memorable book.

Some have panned this book as having main characters who reader's didn't care about. I can only say that those readers must be looking for heroes. For those seeking to understand HOW Nazi Germany could have happened, this is a perfect addition to the lexicon as a glimpse into America's inertia, latent if not overt anti-semitism, lack of foresight, and even investment driven foreign policy (sound familiar 2011 America???).

There are no Shindlers in this book, just complicated human beings. Additionally, Hitler, Goehring, Goebels, etc. are humans.... flawed, monstrous, paranoid, etc..... yet human, not the PBS or History Channel bad guys we've come to loathe. This is a great book.

The book is well-written and well read by the narrator but seems to concentrate almost exclusively on the first two years of Dodd's residence as the US ambassador in Nazi Berlin. Dodd had memories of an earlier Germany as he had studied for his doctorate at Leipzig at the turn of the century, and with his liberal academic training as a historian, his dry wit, and his total lack of sympathy for the rich boy milieu of the then US diplomatic service, he was not long coming to the conclusion that he had been set among a gang of liars, thieves and murderers passing themselves off as the legitimate government of a New Germany. He made his opinions known using historical analogy as a veiled criticism of the Nazi regime. His German audiences understood him perfectly and reacted with thunderous applause: by then they were too frightened to speak out for themselves. The reaction in the State Department was entirely different and a movement got under way to get rid of him before he alienated Hitler, since his main job was to get the German government to pay the 1.2 billion dollars they still owed American investors. The main drama of this story concerns the Night of the Long Knives, June 30 1934, when Hitler, Goebbels and Goering took the law into their own hands and simply assassinated their enemies.

After that the story tails off. What, we want to know, happened in 1935 (open rearmament); 1936 (the military reoccupation of the Rhineland); 1937 (the Hossbach memorandum in which Hitler told his generals to prepare for war).
Not a peep. Was Dodd still in Berlin? Well, yes, he was.

The amorous and rather flighty adventures of his 20-something daughter Martha act as a sidebar to the main story. At first taken up with the glamour and the uniforms and the apparent youthful energy of the Third Reich she underwent her own change of heart and it is suggested she may have become a Soviet agent.

It's a good story. I enjoyed it.. But after 1934 we get only little scraps and tidbits.

This book focuses almost entirely on the first year of Hitler's leadership of Germany, told from the perspective of some "ordinary" folks, principally the US ambassador to Germany and his 20-something daughter. The book is written beautifully, with much interweaving of such primary sources as letters, diaries and recollections (including a book written by the daughter in 1939). It also includes details on the lives of the two principals, the bumbling but well-meaning ambassador & his fights with the snobby suits at the State Department. And the loves and partying of the daughter. I thought the book was very well narrated too.

This book well recounts the eye-opening experience of a rather naive American history professor who arrives in 1933 Berlin as the new US Ambassador. We see Mr. Dodd as a reflection of the best (and sometimes less than best) qualities of a middle American of that period: critical of the snobbish attitudes of his wealthier professional State Department subordinates in the Embassy; seeking to provide well-intentioned advice and a good example to the Nazi leaders so as to improve their behavior and relations with other countries; and expressing on occasion his own anti-Semitic views that were common in the US at that time. A gradual transformation in his attitude toward the Hitler government occurs, culminating in the shocking ???Night of Long Knives??? purge in July, 1934 when Hitler approved the arrest and murder of 100???s of suspect party members (including his long-time comrade Kurt Roehm, head of the SA) and political opponents, including a few army generals whose loyalty to Hitler was questioned. From that point it was fully clear to Ambassador Dodd that the Nazi government was a criminal regime that constituted a serious danger that could not be trusted nor dealt with under normal terms of civilized relations.

Unfortunately for everyone, the US, Britain and France???the key countries in a position to stop Hitler???were slow to recognize or confront the true depravity and dangers of the Nazi regime until it was too strong to stop short of a major war. The West was mired in the Great Depression and guided by public opinion that greatly feared another major war, both of which Hitler recognized and used to his advantage to move forward until he was too powerful to stop without such a war.

The book offers a sub-plot of the Ambassador???s daughter, Martha, who in her mid-20???s made a point of fully enjoying Berlin, with numerous friends and love affairs. She also changed her attitude toward the Nazi regime as she saw its true horrors over time.

This is a memoir of an American family living in Berlin during the years Hitler came to power. It is 1933, and William E. Dodd is sent to Berlin as the American Ambassador to Germany. What he and his family saw that year and the ensuing years defies description. It is harrowing. Nevertheless, I am grateful for this remembrance because we must never forget what happened and what led to it being able to happen. Everyone should be educated about this period of time. Otherwise, something similar could sneak up on us even here in America. In fact, check your back from time to time.

It seems to me that there are two kinds of history writing. One kind informs about what happened. A good example of this kind of writing is William L. Shirer’s “History of the Third Reich.” It contains a factual exposition, in time line form, of the events comprising the period it covers. But, after we have some knowledge of the facts, we may want to go further and seek an explanation for the events, that is, why did they happen. It is this second type of history, the “why,” that is the most interesting, and it leads us down further pathways of thought, to ask “Could it have been different?”

“In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin,“ by Erik Larson, does not present any facts that were heretofore unknown to any reader like myself, who has read extensively about the 1930’s, but it does help to explain these events and hence is very valuable. To the casual reader wanting to read a good tale, thanks to the story-telling ability of Larson, “In the Garden of Beasts“ is as engrossing and compelling as any adventure story on today’s fiction book lists. It is a proverbial page turner.

The book impacted me in two ways. First, I lost more respect for President Roosevelt, who has been a hero to many of my generation. Actually, as scholarship of the last 60 years or so has provided more and more information and analysis of Roosevelt’s presidency, for me, he long ago fell from the “greatest American presidents” circle, to that of an important war president (it’s difficult for any non-war president to be considered great). In “In the Garden of Beasts,” Roosevelt’s failure to give our ambassador to Germany (1933-1938), William E. Dodd, who is the main character in this book, clear direction about American policy towards Germany, in spite of the amazing access that Dodd had to personal meetings with Roosevelt. Dodd, a history professor and no strategic thinker, was competent enough to follow Roosevelt’s

loved this book. good narration of a great new book from a brilliant writer. One of the best audios I had yet in my ~2 years of audible. If you're interested in the folly of the 3rd Reich and the chaos of pre-war Berlin this is a very good way to learn through the authors narrative of the Dodd family.